Ever wonder how popular your favorite genealogy website is, when compared with the rest? One good way to find out is to read over the list on the ProGenealogists website. The list of the 50 Most Popular Genealogy Websites is updated annually, and the 2010 list became available in January of 2011.
Perhaps you have had your eye on a genealogy website that you have been curious about trying, but are hesitating, because you haven’t been able to discern how good the website really is. Or, maybe you are just curious about how the most well known genealogy websites compare with each other. If so, then you will want to check out the newly updated list on the ProGenealogists website.
ProGenealogists is the name of an official Ancestry.com research firm. Read over the blog on their page, written by Kory L. Meyerink, MLS, AG, FUGA, about the 2010 list of the Most Popular Genealogy Websites, to learn more about it, and to see the entire list. Four major commercial ranking companies were used in order to measure the popularity of each website. These companies are: Alexa.com, Compete.com, Quantcast.com, and Ranking.com.
Each one does things a little bit differently from the rest. Alexa.com based how it ranked the genealogy websites on three months of aggregated historical traffic data as gathered from the millions of people who use the Alexa Toolbar. Compete.com bases it on the number of people each domain attracts each month. Quantcast.com uses information from several million anonymous people who share their web usage history with Quantcast. From that, they use a statistical technique to project what websites the rest of the United States is visiting. Ranking.com tracks over 215,000 users, globally, as they visit websites in one month.
What genealogy websites are the most popular? You might not be surprised to learn that Ancestry.com is at the top of this year’s list. Ancestry.com is the genealogy website that is the most easily identified one, especially since they have connected with the “Who Do You Think You Are?” television show. Ancestry.com frequently adds entire collections of records and documents, and often makes select collections free for everyone, even non members, to use for a specific weekend.
MyHeritage.com is number two on the list. This website has a strong focus on community building and networking. Much of the website can be accessed for free, and you can choose if you would like to pay in order to gain access to all the features of this genealogy website. They recently made big improvements to their Smart Matches system, which can alert a genealogist who uses the MyHeritage website to potential relatives that they may not have discovered yet.
FindAGrave.com placed third on the list of the top 50 Most Popular Genealogy Websites. This website has a database of over 57 million cemetery inscriptions. They add around a million new ones every month, thanks to the work of several volunteers. You can find a lot of photographs of tombstones on this website.
Image by wilhei55 on Flickr